Who will win Don? Surely there a reasonable prediction can be made on that one! We organised the debate between Dr Craig and Dr Cooke at Auckland University last year (video footage on our site) and predicted the results somewhat accurately then....

I don't think this is a clash of the giants; Hitchens is not a giant of contemporary atheism although some of Craig's former debating partners have been.

This will be a clash of popular journalistic atheism versus scholarly philosophical theism. If Hitchens is successful it will be due to his ability to work an audience rather than the quality of his arguments. If Craig is successful Hitchen's arguments will be completely decimated.

I am looking forward to it, it will be interesting indeed to see the "new atheist" come up against someone who can reason.

Isn't an atheist or agnostic lacking humility, really claiming he has to be God to know if God exists because even if that person knew everything (all cause and effects) except for one small item, he would still hold out to use this as an excuse to reject God (for only God can know all things)?

1. It is not effective to argue against religion in general by citing the specific bad behaviors of certain religious people in a variety of religions.

Doug Wilson

1. Rational thought is not compatible with atheism, because atheism is committed to materialism. If human behavior are totally determined by chemical reactions, then it is not possible for humans to reason about the world.

Yes, it should really be a short fight that resoundingly ends in Dr. Craig's favor. Every philosophical argument hinges on two key assumptions:

(1) The existence of rational thought / free thinking. If rational thought does not exist, then (as pointed out above) we cannot reason about the universe (whatever its ultimate nature). Apart from rational thought, distinctions like "intelligent vs. stupid", "wise vs. foolish", "sane vs. insane" and "rational vs. irrational" (not to mention "logical vs. illogical") all fall to dust. Apart from rational free thinking, philosophical arguments cannot have intellectual merit because there is no such thing as an intellect.

It follows that if one's world-view cannot support both assumptions, then that world-view (a) lacks intellectual merit and/or (b) lacks moral merit. Of course, atheism is a failure on both counts (as noted by others). Atheism is in fact the most easy-to-dismiss faith on the planet. (Atheism only survives because atheists are good at playing offense, putting other people down, and avoiding scrutiny of their own religion.)

It's easy to dismiss the compatibility of atheism and rational thought (per Doug Wilson's words). So technically, even if atheism is true, Hitchens has nothing truly rational, reasonable or intelligent to say. Even if atheism is true, there is no intellectual reason to be an atheist and no intellectual reason not to be religious.

The moral question usually takes some more wrangling. Atheist's often cite Euthypro's dilemma in an attempt to weed God out of moral discussions. However, the underlying question is Socrates' famous inquiry, "What is holiness / piety / goodness?" Euthypro's dilemma only posits two possible answers to Socrates' question (arbitrary Divine commands vs. objective moral truth outside of God). If it's (a) arbitrary Divine commands, then moral truth could change if God woke up on the wrong side of bed. So the atheist usually tries to push for option (b), since that eliminates the need for God. But if morality is outside of God, Socrates' question stands: what is goodness? Atheists never actually answer that question. They call God an ad hoc explanation for morality and then put forward absurd theories like collective human opinions / solidarity (which is really just atheistic polytheism) and "whatever's good for evolution" (as if the nonsentient Blind Watchmaker really cares about overevolved blobs of meaningless garbage on a worthless planet in the atheistic cosmos).

However, there is a third option: that God's nature itself is goodness; truth is a Person, which is just what I John 1:5 contends and Jesus contended when He told Pilate, "I am truth." The "God's nature = goodness" argument effectively solves both halves of the equation in Euthypro's dilemma and God's nature is also the only valid answer for Socrates. So for moral truth to exist, God must exist.

And even if atheism is true, Hitchens can provide no genuine moral reason for people to feel obligated to be an atheist. It's not as if the Blind Watchmaker gets upset at religious people ...

Also, I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this one:

Atheists have retreated to saying that "God probably does not exist" because (as some others have pointed out) cannot absolutely prove that God does not exist. To back up their claims, they cite the fact that they also can't prove that fairies, unicorns, gnomes and ghosts don't exist. So obviously God is just a fairy tale.

But lately, because evolution has been proved to be nearly statistically impossible (to put it mildly), many atheists now believe that there must be infinite universes that have existed for infinite time. Therefore, given infinite universes and infinite time, even the most improbable events will eventually occur. This stance is now the only way to statistically justify an assumption of naturalism.

But notice the humorous irony ...

If there are infinite universes spread out over infinite time, then why not believe in unicorns, fairies, griffins, gnomes and dragons?

A unicorn is just a horse that randomly evolved a horn on its head. A fairie is a small primate with opposable thumbs and latent bird DNA that allows some of them to fly (maybe one of the females really likes teeth). There are much stranger creatures than unicorns on earth that allegedly randomly evolved, so why not believe in unicorns?

Atheists also claim that miracles are not possible, hence the Bible must be false, etc. But again, given infinite universes and time, why not believe in miracles?

Mary would have just been a woman with a random asexual mutation and a Y-chromosome in an ovary, which allowed her to have a virgin birth of a son. Statistically likely? No, but with infinite universes and time, even the most unlikely events will finally occur.

So even if atheism is true, there's no reason not to believe in 100% of the Biblical miracles.

I have been studying the Philosophy of Religion in my Philosophy paper at My University. Dr William Lane Craig was invited to my University by the head of the Philosophy department. My understanding is that he did very well, and the lecturers spoke very well of him who were from the Philosophy department.

I actually met Dr William Lane Craig when he visted my town, and l found him an exceptional and very nice guy.

Dr William Lane Craig's arguments have been used in my class.

I have seen the Arguments from Atheism, and read some of the Aruguments from Evil against the existence of God. They truly do not make sense at all.

An atheist will accept nothing as proof for God's existence and parlor tricks, of course, don't count. But a Christian will accept nothing as proof for God's non-existence because you can't prove something happens all by itself in nature or disprove the exponential progression of conscience. So what then? It all hinges on the resurrection. If no naturalistic explanation fits the data for the resurrection claim, then Jesus is God. A Christian will accept Jesus is not God if a naturalistic explanation can be put forward that fits the data, but an atheist will not accept the proof Jesus is God if they can't find a naturalistic explanation for the resurrection data accepted by skeptical scholars. But Hitchens said the golden rule is to treat others as he would like to be treated, yet he has a double standard. So here is an example of Hitches breaking his own moral values showing that objective moral values don't exist in atheism, since objective moral values don't exist without God.

I am also looking forward to the debate... every debate with Christopher Hitchens is humorous. He is a great debater, even if some of his arguments are actually incorrect. (Yep, I know what I said - a debate isn't always won by the one holding the facts. Style, it is all about style)

My only worry is that William Lane Craig (WLC) is too nice a chap for Hitchens and Christopher will ‘hold back’ and it will not be as funny.

I can tip how the debate will go though - WLC will say that Hitchens has not proven God doesn't exist, only that he doesn't like Him if He did.

Thing is, it is for WLC to provide evidence for his God - the 'facts of Jesus resurrection' is a well worn one and would not hold up in any court of law in the US.

We MUST pray hard about this debate.The situation is becoming dire and we need a clear victory which will be very hard against a withering rhetorician such Hitchens. WLC will need more than the best arguments here.

Listen to Craig's debate against Eddie Tabash. It will probably be much like this one.

We're used to hearing Craig in a battle of logic, data, intellectual discussion, etc., not in a battle against rhetoric and arguments you'd only here at places like freeratio.org or random atheist/Christian conversations on a college campus.

Yes, B.J., I agree. Hitchens will "win" the debate so long as he is emotional and outrageous engough.

Perhaps he will use the argument from "vulgar language" or the argument from "I knew a hypocritical Christians once" or the argument from "I want to have sex and my parents say I can't" or the well-known argument from witty put-downs about your mother's weight.

Devastating stuff. And very convincing to freethought types, as opposed to, say, scientific evidence or valid syllogisms with sound premises.

Yes, Craig was delightfully aggressive with Carrier, but not right away, which I think is the best approach.

Craig was serious for his opening speech, and his first rebuttal. But then in his second rebuttal and his concluding speech, he absolutely UNLOADED on Carrier in a devastating, but still appealing, way. Not mean, just effective.

I pray Craig/moderator is able to corral Hitchens in if there's interchange allowed - I've not seen the format of the debate. Will Hitchen's filibuster..? How many red herrings can you count..? Will rhetoric/style win over substance..? Oh the questions...

Would love to be there but can't wait 'til this is available for download/purchase...

This seems just as big as the Craig/Flew debate and since I wasn't around during that time I'm very excited for tonight. God Bless you Dr. Craig and I'll be praying for you and the audience in attendance.

Thing is, it is for WLC to provide evidence for his God - the 'facts of Jesus resurrection' is a well worn one and would not hold up in any court of law in the US.

Reply:

Yep, that is what Simon Greenleaf once said, and he set to prove it, and it proved him wrong. It's unfortunate that you would use the court of law in the US today, as it is corrupt beyond all recognition. Please come with better approach.

I'm so going to have watch the Craig/Carrier debate. Carrier himself said he lost but that he didn't expect to win going in anyway. His excuse is that defeating an assertion takes longer than presenting it and both sides had equal time. *rolls eyes*

It doesn't help that his rep that he's apparenlty mentoring Rook Hawkins.

I'm an athiest and I expect that Hitchen's will lose. Fine by me, can't stand Hitchens. Even though I don't agree with Craig's position, I know that he is a superior debater. I'm just looking forward to Hitchen's getting beat. Hope it's up on Youtube sometime, can't afford the $98 bucks.